Rescue Operations

Posted on Sun May 6th, 2018 @ 8:49pm by Major Hailey Weston & Staff Sergeant Nyx'e'Trixe Valentine & Captain Michelle Bartlett & Lieutenant Cor Cordale & Ensign Felicie Rivero

Mission: https://wellington.pegasusfleet.site/index.php/sim/missions/id/4
Location: Draxis Eight

The way was slow going, but that was the nature of covert movement, but none of them were acting as pretty to the native wildlife, at least none of the predators were trying to eat them or, to her observation, to stalk them. And anyways, the wildlife shouldn't be that big of an issue. Yes, predators, but none of the apex predators had made their presence known at all.

A slow movement by Nyx, a fist raised over a few seconds, and Hailey repeated the maneuver, then gestured lower to the ground before she crept forward to where Nyx was crouched. "Left, twenty points, second branch up." The Tialan whispered, "Doesn't see us, neither does the one thirty more points to the left of him."

Hailey nodded, "Cover me... Then go back and bring up the kiddies." Hailey crept off a few dozen meters to the left to clear where the other kept motionless, then stood, "Whiskey." She called.

"I wish!" The voice from a third spot as the other two heads turned, "Juliet." They finally gave the predetermined countersign as this one made themselves visible and the two known heads swiveled briefly towards Hailey before continuing to scan the rest of the forest.

Hailey made a motion meant for Nyx, then, keeping her pistol drawn, moved towards the now-approaching Bajoran, "Major Weston," She introduced herself, "Sorry for the wait and even more sorry I couldn't bring more help. I've got two engineers and three other troops with me, also a pilot if you needed one." She shrugged.

"Tekka Biran. Pilots I'm good on, I'm one of 'em. Engineers? Maybe they could tell me what's broken... Ours got fried when we put down, something took him out and took down the systems and we're stuck. But I know that we're not your main reason for being here, though I wish." Tekka sighed, "We found her by accident, was hoping to negotiate for some supplies with the Federation if we could bring her back."

"I'll talk to the Commodore myself." Hailey promised, following the Bajoran, ducking inside the darkened ship, lit with candles. They came around the corner and Hailey's eyes found the other woman, wearing rather formless clothing, but recognized her just the same. "Commander Bowman?" She queried, "Major Hailey Weston, I'm here to take you home, ma'am."

Bowman was working on trying to fix the engine. She figured if she was stuck here, she may as well put her experience to good use. Stupid Maquis raiders. Their engines were ancient piles of heaping crap before the Maquis became a thing. Add in one heavily modified and trying to also fit a cloaking device to get through all of Cardassia, it was no wonder they limped to this planet before crash landing. She looked up at the woman, thinking her familiar but in fairness, it had been a while. And the woman she looked like wasn't a major. She looked almost relieved to see another Federation uniform after so many months. "You'll have to excuse me if the first thing I say was 'It took you long enough'." she added with a sympathetic smile. "I was worried Ross and Blanchard forgot about me. I'll have to give the Captain hell when I get back."

"Then let's work on getting back." said one of the accompanying scientists. Carter looked the part of a scientist, what with those silly glasses and the frumpy hair style. All a ruse. The incogneto engineer approached the ship, not a wreck she reminded herself... a ship... and began her preliminary investigation. "Name's Carter." she introduced herself to Bowman. No rank, no elaboration of name. Just Carter. "Anything in here that shouldn't be in here that I can't comment on?" motioning to the internals as she started to download a schematic. No, not the dummy schematic.

"As far as I understand, all information is cleared through Bajoran Intelligence. When you send your final report, just copy them in on it. This entire thing was their idea in the first place." she said. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Carter." she added. "I hope nobody intends to get this ship to fly... I think it's toast."

"It's Miss. The uniform isn't doing me any favors."

"Sorry." Bowman replied. "A little tired, and trying to fix this piece of space junk is rattling my brain." she added.

"Carter, Rivero, start digging in and see what needs fixing and if it can be done... Give me a report within an hour if you can, two tops." Hailey looked apologetic, "We're on a time schedule, ma'am, sorry. And I am sorry ma'am, but Colonel Blanchard and Captain Ross are both dead, along with most of the senior staff in a shuttle explosion set up by Major Lo'Mah and Gul Kassela, who was impersonating you. Captain Bartlett is in command and took me out of medical and put me in charge of the Marines, ma'am. Right now, the only department heads from when I believe you were replaced, are Captain Bartlett, Lieutenant Tink, and Ensign Gervais. Commander Rostra is the new Exec and Commodore Myers has his flag on the Wellington as well."

"I see." Bowman replied, taking the news in for a moment. She'd known the Captain for a long time. She was originally his first Chief Engineer. She was shocked that he was gone. She sat quietly for a moment and then simply nodded. "I see." she added. "Bartlett... Always figured she liked command more than she let on. I would say Congratulations, but... It doesnt seem appropriate."

"Ma'am," Felicie acknowledged the Commander as she slipped passed, dropping to her knees inside the craft to access the internals of the primary engineering console in the cockpit of the raider. Pulling a tricorder out, she flipped it open and started to scan the internals, following the circuitry. Based on what she had overheard the Bajoran telling the Major, she was already anticipating a number of possibilities that may have caused the problems. Pausing momentarily and resting back on her haunches, Felicie looked across at Carter who was working maybe only a foot away from her. "Lets say we get this bucket of bolts up and running, how are we gonna explain to the spoonheads why there is suddenly a second warp signature on the planet?" She asked quietly. "They're already watching us..."

Carter gave Felicie a smirk, "Well simple, we don't give them two. We can easily just get this wreck in a tractor beam and tow it out of Cardassian space. We can tag it either as an environmental hazard, which is the truth... or as part of the scientific expedition, we found interesting samples and collected them for study." she offered.

"The alternative seems a bit more difficult. Fix a ship with more broken parts then a smashed LEGO set, not to mention this thing is crammed full of parts that I don't think we're allowed to know are in here." she offered with a smirk. "I think giving this one a tow may be the better option."

"And you don't think towing another federation vessel out of known Cardassian space is gonna raise a question or two?" Felicie replied in a hushed whisper. "How is the Major gonna explain that we just happened to stumble across a known federation craft on our plant and animal hunting expedition?" She shook her head quickly. "I don't think even the spoonheads are stupid enough to go for that... Just something to think about. Anyway, I think we're probably looking at a burned out plasma manifold here, what do you think? It's a common enough fault with these machines, and it would explain the explosion that took out their engineer."

"Well, if we towed it close enough with the power at minimum maybe they wouldn't notice?" Carter offered in that 'golly I hadn't thought of that' tone, before turning back to the task at hand. A few passes of a tricorder in the suggested area, "Yeah, looks like. Though I don't think I want to know how much was running through that manifold to make it pop like that." she said with a shake of her head. "Well, let's trace back and see if there was a surge, then we can work on repairs."

"Could have been anything from dodgy deuterium to planetary interference on landing." Felicie replied easily. "It looks like there are a few burned out conduits that would need to be replaced before we could do any kind of real testing. If we bypass the primary systems and bring the secondary fusion reactors online we might be able to get the ship running on partial power, at least enough to run the main computer, replicators and environmental controls, we can run a full diagnostic that way and access replicators to get the parts we need... seems much more preferential to doing a 20k round hike each time we discover something new we need. What do you think?" Felicie looked across at Carter, clearly seeking guidance. Even though she was pretty confident in her theories, she was just an ensign and a new ensign at that.

"Is the cloak salvageable?" Bowman asked.

Carter started with a nod to Felicie. "Sound theory, let's get that started." then she turned to Bowman, "If we're on secondary systems only then whatever you have of a cloaking system in here will be starved for power. Not even supposed to have a cloaking system but, I guess this is one of those things I didn't see, and talks I didn't hear." she shook her head. "We'll see what we can salvage, but until we know the full scope, no guarantees."

"Well, lets hope it still works, it would solve the problem on how to get this thing off the planet without being detected," Felicie said as she bypassed the primary systems to bring the secondary fusion reactors online. "Taking non essential systems down to conserve power. Hopefully with less systems vying for power the diagnostic will complete a bit quicker."

Hailey stood near the edge, listening in, then beckoned to the commander of the ship, bringing him over to her and Bowman, then lowering her voice, "Captain, if we can't restore power to the engines, I'm to offer to take you off planet and set charges to destroy your ship, same goes for if the cloaking device doesn't come back up if it can. While I have some doubts we could tow with a tractor beam to get her off the planet, I'm not willing to take the risk that they'll scan us and see the tractor beam active while we're blundering about with no maneuverability. And when I said we're on a time limit, I wasn't kidding. We've got about eleven or so hours before we need to start back to the shuttle or else risk the locals sending someone out to check on us. It was a bluff that got us down here in the first case and our cover story won't hold up to more than the cursory look we got."

Captain Biran nodded somberly, "We're short of ships as it is out here, I'm not ready to give up on her quite yet. If we can get the engines back on, I might be willing to make a run for it."

"I'll see what I can do. But we're going to be cutting it pretty close to Major Weston's timeline." she said. "The engine blew out pretty hard. I suppose we won't get our money back..."

"I'm afraid not." The Captain agreed, "It's going to be a last minute decision, Major. I... We need this ship." He thought for a moment, "But, we can set the demolitions just in case. Anyways, you won't need them going home, would you?" He asked hopefully.

"Free demo?" Hailey laughed, "I think we can do that. CHAVEZ?" She called loudly, "Do it!" She smiled at the other two, "Commander, if you want to help dig in, feel free. I meant to ask, does anyone need medical attention?"

Carter gave a nod to Felicie as she worked alongside the other engineer. "Oh I'm certain it'd solve a number of problems." it didn't sit well with the crewhand that there was even a cloaking device ON a Federation ship, but out here in Don't Ask Questions Land, she didn't expect answers. This was just something she'd have to forget happened once they were back on the right side of accountability.

"How's the diagnostic coming along?" she asked as she completed another secondary power coupling, allowing for a little more power flow. They had to be careful not to bring too much power up too fast, lest the sudden bloom show up on a sensor pass.

"Not good." Bowman replied. "There's so many blown inverters and relays and coupling failures that its hard to adequately establish any sort of engine activity." she added. "Plus never mind that it would give away our position if done wrong. When the ship failed, it really failed. Too bad we couldn't just maroon that Ferengi here."

Felicie rocked back on her heels, using her hands on her knees to balance herself. "A full diagnostic isn't going to happen, we can analyse the systems one at a time and hope nothing gets missed, but bringing everything up makes us too vulnerable and not bringing everything up leaves us flying blind. We can repair what we can see and hope that gives us enough to power everything up, but if we do that there's no turning back. If, and I mean, IF, it runs at all, our time would be limited before we got picked up. We would have to basically power her up, hope the cloak engages, get her up and out of here, and try and fix everything else on the run. Either way, the odds aren't running in our favour."

Hailey was patching up the arm of one of the crewmen and listened in, "But one thing is for sure, if we go that route, it's not going to happen until the shuttle with Commander Bowman is out of the system. If it comes down to it, I'll let volunteers stay if they want, I'm not going to order anyone to stay." The Captain of the ship shifted uncomfortably at that statement, wanting to say something, but choosing not to.

Carter gave a thought for a moment, looking around at the mess around her. "Let's try something." she proposed. "We're trying really hard to salvage this shuttle because why? It's got tech that we don't want falling into the hands of anyone else."

"So let's disconnect it. Unhook everything we can that we don't want to get found, and transport it to the other shuttle. Hell, we might be able to install the cloaking device on the other shuttle. If we can manage that, we dress this crash site up like it was our shuttle that we entered in, like it suffered some horrible malfunction and exploded on going down. Then we tip toe out of the system and let the Cardassians assume we all died in the crash. Maybe put a little extra pepper on the crash so there's nothing to find to dispute that."

"This way, we have everything and everyone safely tucked away, and all our loose ends about being here are covered up nicely. We all technically die in the crash, there's nothing left but standard wreckage, and we sneak away." she offered.

"Sounds like a plan to me." Bowman replied. "That way the Cardassians leave us alone. I'm ready to call time of death on this damn hunk of junk anyway. Where do you need me, Major?" she asked the junior officer, showing almost no pretentiousness compared to her imposter.

It only took Hailey a second to consider it all and make her decision, "Rip out the cloak, but we're going to just have to store it on the shuttle, not hook it up. We can get out of the gravity well perfectly fine, in fact, if we try something fancy like making it look like we crashed? Something could go very wrong, very quickly. The KISS Principle is in effect in this situation. Keep It Simple. Captain?" She looked at the Bajoran, "Sorry, but your command is going to be destroyed, we'll see what we can do to get it replaced, but I can't make any promised." He looked dejected, but nodded, understanding the situation. "We're going to have tight quarters on our shuttle, so be prepared to get all cozy-like. We'll set a timer on the explosives and we are going to be out of the system by a few hours before it goes off, then it really won't matter what they find."

Carter gave a nod, then turned to Felicie, "Let's unhook the fuel packs for the reactor too. Don't need an antimatter spill on a planet we might want to come back to." she said with a smile. Leaving that much antimatter might be bad for the environment when the rest of the shuttle went up. "Let's get that cloak out, wipe the computer, and then prep for another exciting hike in the woods." she said, but this time she gave a little laugh.

Felicia nodded, returning to the main engineering console. “Before we erase the mainframe and any stored backups is there any data anyone wants saved?” She asked quickly. “Once the ship goes boom this information is gonna be a touch more difficult to retrieve.”

Captain Biran shook his head, "Nothing we can't replace. We had a backup made before we came out this way, just really wipe them. We don't have much compromising information on the computers, but you never know what they can find with a really concerted look."

Felicie looked up at the Captain and grinned. “Don’t worry,” she said brightly, “By the time I am done they won’t even be able to tell what media was used as storage.”

"I'll get yanking that cloak out." Bowman said. "Anyone free to give me a hand?"

Carter held up a hand, "Yeah, gimme a second, gotta dig myself out." and she extracted herself from her posture half-way in the floor to make her way to Bowman. "Gently, though. If even half of the field reports I've read about failing technology are true, we want to treat this with kid gloves." she gave a smile, "With our luck, pulling too hard would render us all invisible or something." she said, her tone dismissive. I mean, what are the odds that would ever happen again?

"Again?" Felicie queried with a laugh, glancing at the others as she worked, severing the backup links and then erasing the secondary and tertiary backups of the mainframe.

Bowman raised an eyebrow. "I'd.. I'd really rather not disappear again. Cardassian prison was enough of that, thank you very much." she added as she reviewed the status. "Once they're severed from the mainframe, we can start taking it apart. And we'll have to proceed very carefully. My understanding is the Maquis didn't always perform regular maintenance so much as put one bandaid on top of another and from anything I saw, there was a thick layer of them before this thing crashed."

"We really didn't have much of a choice." Biran pointed out, "We don't have a true maintenance base so we made do with what and who we had. At least these things keep on going when you slapdash some repairs on."

"Sounds about right." Bowman replied. "The cloak is now removed from the primary systems. Just need to do secondary and tertiary and then we can proceed to disassemble it."

"Alrighty, mainframe and both backups are wiped, there is no way anyone can even get so much as a time stamp from there, but just to be sure once we're done and everyone is out I'm gonna set up a feedback overload to fry the internals." Felicie scooted back from the main engineering console and looked across at the others. "Is there anything else that needs to be done?"

"Explosives are ready." Chavez said as he poked his head back into the compartment, then was on his way out again.

Hailey nodded, "Now just the cloak."

***About an hour later***

The stretcher holding the cloaking device looked heavily laden as two of the party manhandled it along back down the path and Hailey glanced back at the other ship one last time, then back to the front. It was slower going with the device, so instead of four hours, it took six for them to get back to the shuttle. Time-wise, there was no rush anymore. Fourteen hours had passed and Hailey waved Bowman and Biran over to her, "We aren't going to lift off for a few hours, I don't want the Cardassians to get too suspicious. We had to convince them we really wanted to be here and running from the party too early would probably make them suspicious."

"We've got the main thing we were worried about." Bowman replied. "I'm good to depart when you are. Looks like a damn fine piece of equipment."

Finally being back in their own vessel, the first thing Felicie did was to break out an emergency water pack, splashing it on her hands and face before drinking deeply. Finally sated, she leaned back in her seat and sighed. "So how long until we can get the hell out of here?" she asked, looking around at all the higher ranks around her.

"About three hours.. If you want to take some fresh air, stay in the area with a buddy. Then we are out of here. Good work everyone."

OFF:

Major Hailey Weston
Raider Team Lead (et al)
USS Wellington

Commander Olivia Bowman
Former Executive Officer
USS Wellington

Commander Tekka Biran
Insurgent Starship Captain

Ensign Felicie Rivera
Engineering Officer
NPC

Ensign Carter Samson
Engineering Tribute
NPC